Metropolis

Wow...never thought a film from 1927 would be so impressive.
Fritz Lang directed Metropolis, a film-noir about a futuristic city with skyscrapers, traffic jams & videophone way before all this was happening or possible. Love the story too, though it's not the Avatar from the 20's (as it's called often) but more like the Titanic, dramatic lovestory with the flooding of the undercity and rescueing the children from the workers below. The uppercity (the happy few) lives it's own seperate life, but due to the son of the city founder, their worlds meet in the end. (and collaps)
Surely a masterpiece, and loads of Lang's photographic points of views, tricks & ways were an example for modern directors.


The movie was originally about 2.45 hours, and soon after it's release shortened. A lot of the removed scenes were forgotten, disappeared and never recovered so the Metropolis I saw when studying at the St. Joost Academy was just a shortened version on videotape. In 2001 however, they discovered a lot of the missing scens in some moist basement somewere in South-America, and filmmakers restored the film to it's original lenght, using the original script and now only a few scenes are missing.
Those missing scenes are described and mounted into the film, so as a viewer we really experienced Fritz Lang's film, not the studio's one, a real director's cut idd :)
I took our eldest son of almost 11 years old to the 3rd viewing (worldwide) of this restored version, as it was Film Festival in Breda last week. There was a pianist playing live and 2,5 hours b&w silent movie didn't really bore him. Only in the beginning it was a bit too slow for him (when mostly Lang is introducing the caracters) but for the rest...I think he'll remember this for the rest of his life. He also was the one pointing out it was like the Titanic, as the son of the city founder tries to rescue the children of the undercity and they are stuck when they run into a closed gate when trying to escape the rising water.
And when going back outside again he said 'he really had to adapt to all the colours' again :) Ans it's not even summer yet, so outside the Mustsee theater it was mostly grey with hardly any sun, just clouds.
Maria is the one who makes the son wonder about the underworld below his city, and what I also found intrigueing was the fact that there were nipples visible sometimes (playfull, jumping lil ladies) and when Maria (above) is turned into the robot she also shakes her hips like Shakira :) and wears hardly any cloths or a bra. The roaring 20's idd! It's good to see how the actresses looked, au naturel bodies and weird 20's make-up. I reckon they are all German as Lang was German too. After worldwarII the centre of the world changed though, and with all artists fled to US we, Europe, lost our leading role in e.g. art.

I think this movie is idd pure art, sometimes a litle too much preaching (7 sins) but over all: very good.
The mad professor, who invented Metroplis for the founder, creates his utter-Machine-Human and in the end captures Maria to transfer her soul into it.
She then, as a robot looking exactly like her, lures the workers (in a frivolous dancing scene) to come with her and destroy the machines below. But then the city floods and she's a real evil witch who gets burned.